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State of the Blog: eBooks, Donations

At the top of the blog header, I’ve added a new tab called “My eBooks”. It represents something completely new on the blog because, well, I’ve never done it before. Some time ago, I was thinking about gathering up the entries I liked the most during the year. I’d hesitate to say that it is a “Best Of” compilation, so I went with the phrase “Selected Entries” for the cover language. This weekend, I went about arranging and formatting them in Open Office, exporting the resulting document into a PDF, converting the PDF to both MOBI and EPUB formats using Calibre, uploaded them to a publicly shared folder on Google Documents, and linking to them from the new tab. The file formats should allow it to be read on every current ereader on the market.

The only problem I had was during the conversion process from PDF to the other two formats. My original table of contents kept getting every line turned into its own page, leaving one sentence with the page number at the top of each resulting page. I couldn’t find a good remedy for this, so I ended up just making the table of contents an image. This stopped the page problem, but it may make the formatting seem like it jumps in size from the table of contents to the first entry. It’s an acceptable solution for me.

I also had some minor formatting issues within the original document itself, so I hope my editing helped. I tested out resultant PDFs on my iPad to see how it looked. So, at least it looks alright on the iPad.

I made the cover art using Inkscape. The resulting design was just something that popped into my head, a compass with the blog’s initials plus the year represented. Nothing fancy, really.

I decided to make it a free download to whoever wants it for two reasons. First, I’m really an open source kind of guy. I like being able to give away stuff like my thoughts and ideas to people who can use it. There are people who can testify to this fact when they get a Facebook message or email out of the blue where I rattle off an idea or concept I have. Personally, I feel that ideas are things that you should give away. They are too valuable to be kept to oneself, especially when it can help out someone else.

Second, I’m not indifferent to the vanity nature of the project. I’ve created a product for which there is no discernable market desire; I’ve just created it for myself as a way to carry around some of my favorite entries on my iPad. It would seem a bit silly to charge for that, especially when all of the entries can be found on the blog for free.

On the flip side of this thought, I have considered the self-publishing route on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Lulu (which would cover the iBookstore). The purpose of placing the ebooks online for money is to raise funds to offset costs in attending conferences. I’ve been exploring ways to raise money for this specific use for some time and I’d like to utilize any medium possible. While the ebooks would be available on the blog for free, for those who wanted to actually pay for a copy there would be an option. It’s the idea that people will pay for things that they find valuable (for example, libraries). I’ll have to check in to the details of self publishing on those platforms, but in the meantime, it’s available for free here.

I had been considering a PayPal donate button as another option. I’d rather not go with ads, but I know that people have debated this issue on other blogs. Thoughts? How would you feel about it for your own webspace?

I don’t mind ads as long as they’re not popup/jittery/auditory; I see them as the price of getting free content (and appreciate that someone is willing to make it free for me).

I’m not into donate buttons. To me, if you’re going to give your content away for free, stand by that decision.

I *would* like to see more library blogs experimenting with some kind of freemium model, although I don’t know entirely what that would mean in this sphere. Then again, you’ve already proven you know how to do merch…

I don’t think giving away content and having donate button go hand in hand; I see them as mutually exlcusive. If I was putting a button where the free content was, then it might work out as such. But, otherwise, I would disagree with that assessment.

Personally ads annoy me but I also understand how much time and effort it takes to write blog posts and I don’t expect to get something for nothing. There is nothing wrong with recouping your time and effort (and funding conference attendance) whether its ads or a donate button.

When I initially asked about ads there was a strong response from readers against ads, including some who felt is compromised the integrity of the blog and would detract from the sincerity and honesty of the content. Someone suggested a donate button and I was iffy about it at first, it felt a little like begging, but less like selling out which was how ads feel to me.

I’m keeping a spreadsheet of donations as they come in and they are still coming in. I can tell you that Librarian by Day will remain ad-free for 2011 then I’ll re-evaluate.

I just purchased the option to go ‘ad free’ for this blog. I didn’t like what people would encounter when they landed on the page if they weren’t logged into WordPress. So, I’m at least $30 in the hole for this otherwise free site.

My only problem with the Donate button at the moment is that as a free WordPress site it won’t let me put in the PayPal code in the widgits or any of the pages. I may have to look into hosting so I can do that. As they say, you have spend money to make money. :)

We had this same issue with the Buy India a Library blog. What you need to do, instead of the standard donate button — there’s an option for an email link; see http://en.support.wordpress.com/paypal/. (Thanks to Jan Holmquist for figuring this one out.) You can put this code in the wordpress.com textbox.